"Sharp, quirky, and occasionally nettlesome", Walking the Berkshires is my personal blog, an eclectic weaving of human narrative, natural history, and other personal passions with the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills as both its backdrop and point of departure. I am interested in how land and people, past and present manifest in the broader landscape and social fabric of our communities. The opinions I express here are mine alone. Never had ads, never will.

June 01, 2010

The quest for revolutionary war Salisbury Cannon took me to the waters of the Brandywine and the fields of Valley Forge last weekend. At the former I found nothing beside three European gun barrels inside the sadly depleted museum - a victim of state budget cuts- though I did find my way to the "Plowed Hill" where my Ogden and Dayton ancestors held the line in Stirling's Division against the British and Hessian onslaught. However on Sunday a friend and I struck gold, or rather what was occasionally gold painted iron, at Valley Forge.

I made an effort to slip loose the surely bonds of gender and ask for directions at the visitor center, only to be informed by the official I had selected that there were no American made revolutionary cannon at the National Historical Park, nor yet any cannon at all for that matter. My companion commented that had I selected one of the young, buzzcut rangers instead of the sedentary fellow at the tourist information desk, I might have gotten a different response - gender fail - but as it turned out we needn't have been discouraged because the place is swimming in artillery of a decidedly locally made character.

We came upon the 3 gun battery in the picture above at a redan near where Conway's Division encamped in the winter of 1777-1778, and determined that they were of two different calibers (4 or 6 pounders, perhaps) and at least one was a wooden replica (at right), which I believe rules it out as a Salisbury survivor. We ate our lunch and as we wove our way along one way roads through he part on various genealogical errands as well as on the look out for more guns we found many more iron cannon, ranging from light artillery to siege guns and mortars.

I wanted to pay a visit to the Washington Memorial Chapel, when my ancestor Thaddeus Thompson was said to have had a memorial tablet placed by his daughter Rhoda, one of the last real daughters of the Revolution still alive near the end of the 19th century. We asked after it at the gift shop, and while the volunteers there were initially uncertain whether we would find anything, I was able to say I thought it would be in the chapel itself and sure enough, it was one of just two large brass plaques in gothic script on either wall and had been polished by our guide without her really knowing its history! Old Thaddeus was just one of thousands of men who endured that winter, and was later wounded in the trenches at Yorktown and one of the first veterans to receive a pension for his injuries after the war. Whatever pull his daughter Rhoda had as one of the last tangible links to that era got him his solitary plaque on the church wall.

At the site of Knox's artillery park were a number of 4-9 pounders arranged on their gun carriages and
painted a flat yellow in imitation of bronze although they all were of iron. I am analyzing my images to see whether there are any patterns which will help us determine which batches may have come from the same foundry. I found few distinguishing marks, though one large cannon by the Chapel had what looked like 20 C engraved just before the vent.

We also came upon a monument to Maxwell's New Jersey Brigade, with my ancestors Matthias Ogden in command of the 1st and Elias Dayton in charge of the 3rd NJ regiments. The bronze soldier atop the pedestal is wrapped in a blanket and seems to be wearing woolen stockings.

The enemy never attacked Valley Forge, which is today besieged by an invasive sea of microstegium and excessive herbivory by white tailed deer but is treasured as open space by joggers and sunbathers. I had an absolutely delightful time, even if the answer "Yes, we have no artillery" proved unfounded.

There used to be a much closer connection between formerly all-male Haverford College and the women of Bryn Mawr just a short stroll out the Main Line. Even in my day, when Haverford was co-ed with a vengeance, the bi-college identity was inclusive enough for there to be room for that species of male, of which I was a proud member, known as the Bryn Man, who gravitated toward the Bryn Mawr vibe.

The two institutions and their student bodies have fewer interstices today, which I consider a great shame, yet the pulse of that dynamic tension and affection of old still beats when both colleges invite their Alums back on the same weekend, and so I knew that the first night of my reunion I would spend at the Bryn Mawr Step Sing. I also suspected that when duty called, I would not hesitate to answer, but more on that in a moment.

Step Sings are important and beloved rituals at Bryn Mawr, as indeed they were in my mother and grandmother's days at another of the Seven Sisters. Classes with their distinctive owl lanterns convene under the direction of their respective songs-mistresses about the Senior Steps on the side of Taylor Hall. They draw from a songbook that includes generational anthems, rounds and ribaldries, and often punctuated by the college cheer invoking the Goddess Athena:

Anassa kata, kalo kale,

Ia ia ia Nike,

Bryn Mawr, Bryn Mawr, Bryn Mawr!

There is a Haverford rejoinder, cribbed from Jabberwocky - "O frabjous Day! Calooh, Callay!" - but there are few now who remember it.

At the Step Sing last Friday, I arrived fashionably late with a Mawrter for company, only to find "the precession had proceeded according to precedent" and thus had not yet gotten underway. There were hundreds of alumnae and their friends and families, including children swirling glow sticks and more than a few clinking glasses. We knew it was going to be an eventful evening when the class of 1940 got the ball rolling in spectacular fashion. A gray haired nonagenarian in a short skirt with long woolen stockings of some indeterminate hue and wearing her glow stick like a torc gave a rousing rendition of a song from her youth about snorting cocaine.

We thought that would be hard to top. I mentioned that in 10 years or so the class songs would be by Lady Gaga instead of Paul Simon or the Indigo Girls, and right on cue two songs-mistresses did a 4 bar intro of Poker Face. But there was also a rendition of Haverford Harry, which I have taken the liberty of sharing here in full courtesy of the Class of 1971 Songbook:

Haverford Harry

The boy that I marry will have to be
A hermit, neurotic, and wear a goatee,
A Haverfurdian.
He'll be arty and smarty and smell of raw gin.

His hair will be stringy and shoulder length.
He'll snow all the girls with his sheer brute strength.
He's a nudist, a Zen Buddhist,
And his social deportment's the crudest.

His room will be cluttered with sculpture weird.
His chin will be covered with unshaved beard.
He's terrific, he's prolific,
His demands and desires quite specific.

He seems to be haunted with some strange hex,
A complex concerning that thing called sex.
He's sublime-o, what a wine-o,
For some young thing from Shipley, divine-o.

So a Haverford Harry the boy I marry must be ... inevitably!

When they had finished, the mistress of ceremonies noted that there were also lyrics for Harry's Reply
(though sadly not reproduced in the 1971 songbook), and offered the opportunity for any 'Fords in the audience to come up and sing it. She didn't sound as if she expected any takers, but then, I knew of at least one who knew what to expect and was more than willing.

I waited a beat or two, then walked down the aisle in my panama hat and clad in Haverford's scarlet and black, acknowledging with a slight bow the delighted gasps of "It's Tim!" that came from the vicinity of the BMC class of 1990 section. I confess I was relieved that the statute of limitations on my various youthful indiscretions in Athena's demesne appears to have expired with all long since forgiven or forgotten.

I faced the crowd, accepted a microphone and the lyric sheet, and said something rueful along the lines of "Good God" Then up from my left stepped a fellow 'Ford from the Class of 1980, who I remembered afterward had been the only other person with me when this same scene played out at reunion 15 years ago. We were prepared to brazen through another duet, when another Haverford male came forward, and still others, until we may have been a dozen strong up there and game to give it our best. We shook hands and turned to face the music.

We sang the lines with gusto, and let me tell you it was at least as good sauce for the goose as had been for the gander. I recall one small part that went something along the lines of "She's precocious, hair's atrocious, If you get her in bed she's ferocious" which was a crowd favorite (and after which I could not resist getting the aside "You don't know how right that is...")

The whole thing was a lark and went over very well. Someone from the Alumnae office wanted our names afterwords in case they use any of the photographic evidence. I was greeting throughout the rest of the night with anonymous calls from the darkness of "Haverford Harry, you were great!" It was the very least I could do for Bi-Co relations, aside from love the Mawr and its Mawrters, which I do, I do.